Small Case of Ich

[CanadianWaters]

I just spotted what I believe is ich on a few of my fish. Thankfully I spotted it early as there are only 1-3 on 1-3 different fish and all neon tetra. None of the fish seem affected greatly.
To treat I was going to slowly raise the temperature from 25 C (77 F) to 30 C (86 F) and try to daily but may end up more like every other day water changes of 25%. Does this sound safe/effective?

Also if anyone could tell me the sort of science behind this I'd appreciate it. I like to know what I'm doing and all I think I know is that heat speeds up the parasites life cycle.

 

[rpgmomma8404]

Basically what you just said. It speeds up the life cycle. Some people add aquarium salt during the process. I've heard of people just using heat. I did the salt and heat to help get ich out of my 10 and 15 gallon.

 

[CanadianWaters]

I would salt but I have Cory's who wouldn't like the added salt as much I think.

 

[George9]

Basically, youre speeding the life cycle and then killing the ich while it's the free swimming stage


I used this method once and it works pretty well. Id boost the temp to 87 degrees F, though

 

[Fishdreamz]

I have soaked the fish food in garlic juice to speed healing of ick and it works.

Fishdreamz

 

[Fishfur]

Read up on the ich life cycle. There's an article that explains it way better than I can. Let me go find a link for you.

here it is. http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/ich.

Once you know the enemy, it's much easier to fight them

Edit: fwiw, there was a study done on using salt to treat ich in catfish species. Surprisingly, the fish that did the best were the those getting the full dose of salt. It appears that short term exposure is actually fairly well tolerated by catfish, but not long term exposure.

 

[CanadianWaters]

Awesome thanks guys! Ill up the temp and read that article.
So does anybody else recommend using salt?

 

[Fishfur]

I think you'll find salt is one of the most common recommendations for treating ich besides heat.. read up a bit, you'll notice it pops up everywhere. Which is not itself a good reason to believe in anything online, but salt is the oldest fish med there is.. and has been used for almost as long as fish have been kept in containers.

 

[CanadianWaters]

Yes I realize salt is a common way of treating ich but as i said earlier I am worried my Corydoras would not take kindly to the addition of salt.

 

[Thumper828]

I used the heat and salt method for two weeks. I also have 5 panda corys. They did great through the treatment though they never became infected. I used 1 teaspoon of salt for 10 gallons of water, raised heat to 88-89. Still have all my fish!! I also have a bunch of plants. Still have all them also!!!!

 

[CanadianWaters]

Awsome thanks guys! Ill pick some salt tommorow!

 

[Thumper828]

I did everything slowly. I got a cup of my aquarium water, added 3 1/2 teaspoons of salt and added a little at a time over a 4 hour period. took me about 6-7 hours to get my heat up to 88......